"routine."

well fin and i have a bit of a "routine" now, which i like a lot. now it's by no means strict or terribly reliable. and its not realy based on times exactly, but its a routine--for us anyway. here's how the day goes.

*she wakes up (hopefully between 7 and 8) to eat
*she "plays"-- in her bouncer, swing, play mat, in my lap reading, listen to music-- for about 2 hrs
*rock her to sleep-- now depending on her tiredness this first nap can take a while to kick in, or sometimes its nonexistent-- she'll sleep for about 45 min if i'm lucky
*wakes up, put a cute outfit on, and eat
*she "plays" and we go on a walk-- normally the walk will knock her out and she'll sleep in her car seat
*wakes up, eats
*plays
you get the idea. this stays pretty constant till a bit later in the afternoon when her "witching hour" sets in around 5:00. this is when she's pretty fussy for no reason. or at least if there is a reason brandon and i can't figure it out (or haven't yet). at this time we have to pull out all the stops. that means either go for another walk which starts with her screaming bloody murder (no seriously) or putting her in the baby bjorn. both work miracles for now. the great thing about the bjorn is we can actually get stuff done too. we put her to bed around 9 or 10 and let her sleep till she wakes up hungry. i try to go to bed at the same time so i can get as much sleep as possible. i don't really wake brandon up in the middle of the night during the week since he can't feed her. if she needs to be reswaddled i definitely wake him up b/c i just don't do it as well as he does.

so that's basically our day/night in a nutshell. it revolves around a 2.5-3 hr schedule and it works for us. sometimes we'll get lunch with brandon or run an errand. i try to plan those to happen right after she eats. she doesn't mind the car ride and is generally happy as long as she's full and has a clean diaper.

and 2 other awesome things this week! 1. i fit into my favorite pair of sevens!!!!! it's nice to wear pants that have a zipper and a button. i'm back down to 100 lbs. i'm extremely blessed with my metabolism and i will never take that for granted again. i eat worse {and probably more} now than i did when i was pregnant. but i'm "trying" to stay over 100 lbs for insurance reasons.  and 2. finley put herself to sleep in her crib TWICE! when it's time for her nap i give it a try (put her in her crib when she's just nodding off) and if it works great and if not we try the next nap. oh, and 3. she's still doing a great job sleeping at night. wakes only to eat and passes back out. in fact the other night she went to bed at 9:30 and got up for the day at 9:05. it. was. awesome.

so basically i've learned that this whole parenting thing is trial and error. we figure if the night is terrible we just wont do the same thing again. and if it was awesome then we just got lucky. :)